Nothing Ordinary
by Tarie
Summary: If any dodgy sort chose to rifle through the boys' trunks in his dormitory, they'd more than likely pass his on by as the things he had stored in there looked either insignificant or like something that ought to have been tossed in the rubbish bin eons ago. But those things aren't insignificant at all.


In the wizarding world, almost nothing was ordinary. Most things had something special about them whether you recognised it right away or figured it out after a long time of studying it.

But there really wasn't anything special or 'un-ordinary' about his trunk. Like nearly everyone else at Hogwarts, his trunk was made of some sturdy sort of wood and had a few brass bits of hinges and a lock or two, leather handles secured on both ends to make it easier to handle in transport. The school crest was proudly carved in the top and a small nameplate on the lid's side marked the trunk as belonging to him.

It really was rather ordinary-looking.

One year he'd had a Defence Against Dark Arts professor who had a Seven-Lock Trunk. He didn't think he needed that much security for his own trunk because no one would mistake most of what he had in there for anything of value. If any dodgy sort chose to rifle through the boys' trunks in his dormitory, they'd more than likely pass his on by as the things he had stored in there looked either insignificant or like something that ought to have been tossed in the rubbish bin eons ago.

On the very bottom of the trunk was a nondescript scrap of emerald yarn.

That bit of yarn had once been a part of the very first 'real' Christmas gift he'd ever received. Just like she did for all of her children, Mrs Weasley had knitted him a thick, warm jumper. His had been bright green, to compliment his eyes, he figured, while Ron's, much to his chagrin, had been maroon.

That first Christmas at Hogwarts was special to him - not just because of the jumper or even the Invisibility Cloak he had also gotten that year. It was special to him because it was the first Christmas he had ever spent with anyone who actually liked him, let alone cared for him.

The things that stood out to him the most about that Christmas were chess and crackers, his dad's Invisibility Cloak and seeing his parents in the Mirror of Erised, and, most importantly, companionship and brilliant red freckles made more brilliant against a rather detested maroon jumper.

In the corner opposite the piece of yarn was a Slytherin tie.

The tie once belonged to Gregory Goyle and had been confiscated by him during Christmas holiday of his second year at Hogwarts. Although he'd returned Goyle's shoes to him as the Polyjuice wore out, he hadn't deposited any of the rest of the Slytherin's clothing outside that closet door. He hadn't really thought about it, to be honest. He probably would have kept on running to Moaning Myrtle's loo in Goyle's shoes if they hadn't been so ridiculously large on his own feet. Discarding them only happened because he and Ron had needed to find Hermione right away to tell her what they'd learnt from Draco Malfoy.

But he hadn't put that tie in his trunk to because it had once belonged to Goyle.

The tie earned a spot in his trunk because it reminded him of the things he, Ron, and Hermione could accomplish when they worked together. Sure, Hermione had made both boys nearly barmy on more than one occasion but, when it all came down to it, she always made them work for a good cause. Before she had become a part of their lives, he and Ron really hadn't much focus and would have been content to goof about and drift along. Her determination and drive was good for them, just as their more relaxed approach to most things in life was good for her. It was a very delicate balance and a brilliant fit, their friendship, Harry had learnt that Christmas.

If one nudged that green and silver striped tie over just so, one would see two seemingly random bits of twig on the trunk's bottom.

But they weren't just any two twigs.

They were the first twigs to ever be pruned from the tail of his Firebolt.

The Firebolt had been sent to him anonymously for Christmas during his third year. He could remember as plain as day just how awed he and Ron had been when he had unwrapped it. It had been an almost-sacred thing, slowly peeling away the brown wrapping to reveal the gleaming broomstick. Before school had started that year, he'd taken up a room in the Leaky Cauldron and visited Quality Quidditch Supplies every day during his stay to ogle that very broom.

He had scarcely realised that the beauty that was the Firebolt was actually _his_ when Hermione had burst his euphoric bubble and reported the anonymous gift to Professor McGonagall, who immediately confiscated the broom for testing. He (and Ron) had been furious at Hermione, who insisted that someone who wanted to kill Harry could have sent the broom to him and jinxed it.

She only had his best interest at heart, which he realised later on. But in the days right after Christmas, he had been very hard pressed to even consider that notion. Those twigs reminded him both of Ron and the way his voice hitched when he'd seen the broom and the way Hermione had looked out for him, not to mention the fact that the broom itself had come from Sirius. But thinking about Sirius was still too painful and he rarely allowed himself to do it.

There were exactly two twigs in that trunk because they were the very first twigs he had pruned from the Firebolt's tail and the _only_ twigs he had ever removed. He had taken them because he noticed they stood slightly out from the rest of the tail's sleek line, his eyes immediately falling on them one evening when he'd pulled out that broomstick kit Hermione had gotten him one Christmas. Two standing slightly out from the rest, just like Ron and Hermione. He removed and placed them in his trunk for safekeeping, out of harm's reach. If that weren't symbolic, he didn't know what was.

A few inches away from that small length of green yarn was a blue hair ribbon.

He had found it on the floor of the common room after the Yule Ball during his fourth year at Hogwarts. The ribbon had belonged to Hermione and was just as blue and floaty as her robes had been that evening.

She had gone to the ball with Viktor Krum while he and Ron made due with the Patil twins. Not much for dancing, he and Ron hadn't had a very good time that night, Ron even less on account of Hermione's choice in date. But at least, he thought, the two had saved their spectacular row for the privacy of the Gryffindor common room.

He remembered watching them bellow at one another, each scarlet in the face and impassioned. The image of Hermione storming up the girls's staircase, her elegant bun all but entirely down and her hem swishing about her ankles, would forever be burned in his brain, as would be Ron's absolutely thunderstruck look at the entire debacle.

Ron had seemed to miss the point but he, as well as Hermione, had certainly gotten it down. Not long after Hermione had stormed out of the common room, Ron had decided to take a walk. He declined, intending to turn in for the night when a flash of pale blue caught his eyes. A thin strip of the gossamer fabric that had decorated Hermione's upsweep was on the floor near where the Great Big Row had taken place. He hadn't known just why he did it then, but he smelt the ribbon, inhaling the scent of her hair, and pocketed it. Before he turned in for the night, he had given it a permanent home in his trunk.

That floaty blue ribbon was laying atop a rather small and garish painting.

He still wasn't quite sure what exactly the painting was supposed to resemble, even if it _did_ bear his name on the back of the canvas. What he _was_sure of was that the art (if one could call it that) had been a Christmas gift to him from Dobby during his fifth year.

The painting, for one reason or another, rather encompassed what had been his Christmas hols at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place that year: confusing, a bit blurry, sentimental, and cause for a whole lot of thought.

Emotions had been high that Christmas on account of Mr Weasley's injuries and the fact that Percy had returned his Weasley jumper. Kreacher, they discovered, had been hoarding family heirlooms in a dank pantry cupboard. And Hermione had given both boys identical homework planners that spouted gems such as "_If you've dotted the i's and crossed the t's then you may do whatever you please_!"

Hermione herself had received a book on Numerology that she had been wanting from Harry and an unusual-smelling perfume from Ron. When he'd been finished having one of his sulks later on, he thought and thought and thought over the significance of Hermione giving both he and Ron the same gift and analysed the gift that Ron had given her as well. Could her gifts be 'safe' and 'same' to disguise something? She had never given them both the _very same gift_ before, after all. And as for him? His own gift to her had meant something but, at the same time, was an item that could just be construed as being a thoughtful friend and nothing more. Ron's gift, on the other hand, was about as subtle as a Mountain Troll in the girls' loo.

A small box sat in the centre of the trunk's bottom. Resting on top of it was an average-sized pocket watch with a plain-looking key attached it the opposite end of its chain.

It had been gifted to him from the both of them during Christmas of his sixth year at Hogwarts. Time and trust, that was what he thought of immediately when he had seen what was in the small parcel they had presented to him with matching nervous smiles.

They had so much time together, so much time that he cherished but he didn't know if it was _enough_ or, even worse, running out. Voldemort was rebuilding his ranks and his allies and that could only mean that the inevitable was nearing for Harry.

He trusted them, though. He trusted them with his life. He had known that from the moment they dropped into that pile of Devil's Snare and that knowledge only intensified when he laid eyes on that key.

Granted, he didn't know right away what it was _for_ but it didn't matter much.

Hermione and Ron had both taken hold of his hand, then, when he carefully lifted that pocket watch out of the shallow box. In perfect cadence with the ticking of the seconds hand, his heart began to thud and, as the minute hand rolled over to the next, something _clicked_ within him.

He felt it.

They felt it as well. He could tell.

Lifting his eyes to theirs, flickering to brown eyes and then blue and then back again, he asked what the key fit.

It was an Ever-Opening Key, Ron told him. It would open anything Harry wanted, something Hermione especially thought would be useful to Harry whenever he finally decided he wanted to return to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place to go through Sirius' things scattered throughout that house.

He knew what he wanted to open first with that key and he told them so.

Hermione was the first out of the two to reply to his request, telling him that her heart, and Ron's, had always been open to him. It had just taken him time to notice.

The small box beneath the pocket watch and key contained a small Membrall.

He hadn't ever heard of such a thing until the Christmas of his seventh year. When Ron and Hermione first told him what his present from them was, he thought they had gotten him a _Re_membrall. But that wasn't so. They had given him something very similar in appearance to a Remembrall but quite different in what it actually did.

A Membrall, Hermione explained to him, was something like a small, portable Pensieve. It was similar to a Pensieve in that a wizard could place a memory in the ball. It differed from a Pensieve in that it could only contain one memory and anyone could easily view the memory as one would a picture album.

The memory that he had chosen that Christmas to place in it was a very simple yet poignant one: November of their final year at Hogwarts, Ron had taken ill with a rather nasty bout of the Muggle Measles. Madam Pomfrey said there wasn't anything they could do but let the measles run their course. Ron was laid up in the hospital wing for days on end and quite miserable about the whole thing. He wasn't allowed visitors because Madam Pomfrey didn't want to risk an outbreak of measles at Hogwarts. Hermione had nearly gone mad with worry until he suggested they sneak in using his father's Invisibility Cloak. He nearly went round the bend himself from the lack of Ron. They _needed_ him.

Waiting until after the prefects on duty were long finished with their rounds, they snuck into the hospital wing and crawled on either side of Ron's sleeping, flushed form. He didn't wake up but he sensed them, making a small noise in his sleep and turning on his side so they could spoon him from the front and back, hands entwined and resting protectively on his hip.

He chose that memory because his heart had been so full that night it had nearly burst.

And now it was time to place a new memory in the Membrall.

Harry's hands carefully moved aside twigs and yarn and ribbon and such so that he could open that box and take out the small glass ball.

"Oi," a voice boomed from behind him, "you're missing out. Fred's eating a tonne of canary creams popping back and forth trying to get Lily to laugh and Hermione's-"

"Right here beside Ron," said another voice with a touch of amusement in it.

Harry turned around, grinning at the both of them. "There you are," he said easily, the sight of them nearly taking his breath away.

They'd been together for almost ten years now and he still felt a lump in his throat every time he looked at them. So perfect.

"Honestly, Harry, you'll miss all of our daughter's first Christmas if you don't get your head out of that trunk and come back downstairs!"

"Sorry," he said sheepishly, cupping the delicate Membrall in his hands as he straightened.

"Feeling nostalgic, mate?" Ron asked, encircling Hermione's waist with one arm and drawing her near.

"A bit, yeah."

Hermione looked at the Membrall knowingly. "George wanted to see the measles again, did he?"

"Not exactly," smiled Harry. "I thought it was about time I updated this thing."

"Yeah?" Ron asked, reaching a hand out for Harry.

"Yeah," Harry confirmed, crossing to them and taking Ron's hand with his free one. "I don't want us to ever forget our first real ordinary family Christmas together."

"Oh Harry," Hermione said, eyes bright as she drew him in toward her as well, "it's anything but ordinary."

Before leaning in to nuzzle her cheek and squeeze Ron's hand, Harry turned around to look his trunk over once more. Thinking back on everything he'd stored in there and why, he was more than inclined to agree with Hermione.

"Better than ordinary," he whispered against her cheek. "Brilliant."


End file.
